1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disc drive, and more particularly, to a slim optical disc drive installed in portable terminals such as notebook computers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, optical disc drives record or read information with respect to an optical disc such as a CD or DVD. Slim optical disc drives are manufactured to be very thin for use in portable terminals such as notebook computers.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional slim optical disc drive. Referring to FIG. 1, a tray 20 is slidably installed in a lower case 10. The tray 20 includes a spindle motor 30 to rotate an optical disc D and an optical pickup 50 to read or write information by accessing the optical disc D while sliding across the optical disc D . A main control board 60 to control the operation of the optical disc drive is installed in the lower case 10 and connected to the optical pickup 50 and the spindle motor 30 installed on the tray 20 by a flexible printed circuit (FPC) 70. The FPC 70 is flexibly folded or unfolded in a space between the tray 20 and the lower case 10 as the tray 20 slides in and out of the lower case 10. Therefore, the FPC 70 is partially attached to the lower case 10.
To make notebook computers thin, the thickness of the slim optical disc drive included in the notebook computers must be reduced. In the slim optical disc drive shown in FIG. 1, the tray 20 is slidably installed with a minimum interval not to interfere with the lower case 10.
Some major factors which affect the thickness of the slim optical disc drive are the sizes of the optical pickup 50 mounted on the tray 20, a motor 40 to slide the optical pickup 50, and the spindle motor 30. If the sizes of these components are large, the slim optical disc drive is made thick accordingly.
Furthermore, the slim optical disc drive is recently developed to have a recording/reproducing function of a CD-RW and/or a DVD reproduction function, in addition to a CD-ROM reproduction function. To accommodate the above various functions, the optical pickup 50 is made larger. Also, since electrical components having various thicknesses are installed on the main control board 60, the thickness of the slim optical disc drive increases.